fredag, mars 25, 2011

Sweden is always best?!According to this as well as former Swedish governments, the environmental policy in Sweden is always on the front edge and much more developed than in other countries both in Europe as well as the world. Is this correct?No, of course not.

We can naturally find areas within the Swedish environmental and climate policies, having developed in a better way than in other comparable countries but on the whole there are no reasons being more proud over the work carried out in Sweden within this domain, in comparison with other countries in general.

Not long ago representatives for the current Swedish government wrote in one of the leading newspapers in Sweden that they are 'pushing the environmental policies forward' within the EU, describing themselves as being one of the leading parties within this work.

The Minister for the Environment in Sweden, Andreas Carlgren, states that his goal is to diminish the emission of greenhouse gases with up til 40%.According to other documents, commented by the opposition parties recently, the ambition has been and is limited to a recuction of these emissions by 27% between 1990-2020.

During the negotiations within the EU, Sweden has also advocated that they want the European countries to have the opportunity utilizing the reduction in greenhouse emissions, emanating from the developing countries, as if these reductions emanated from Europe!The idea behind this must be that they regard themselves - through the environmental policy and lobbying work - as being the origin of these reductions in those countres?

That would however send a signal to other countries within the EU - and the USA - that there's no need working to hard in reducing the emissions in our own countries - as this could have negative consequences for the industry and its immediate profitiability - as one can use other countries reductions and include them in ours.On the same time one hereby make the industries within the EU, think that it's not at all profitable to reduce the greenhouse gases and thus they feel free to continue as before!If this is the substance of the Swedish policy and that of EU, this will lead to extremely negative consequences from an environmental perspective.

The Swedish Minister for the Environments, claims that he wants EU to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases with up til 30% but according to the political opposition, he has only said that he wants to create the prerequisites for such a policy.What is correct or not, I can't say.

On the whole one can conclude that Swedish politicians, whether they are 'left', 'middle' or 'right':1. always have claimed that the Swedish environmental policies are better than the same policies in most comparable countries in the world and2. they have always been wrong.

This video was released a couple of years ago presenting the environmental ambitions within the European Union but is in my opinion a naïvely positive view of these ambitions, seen in relation to the results and the ongoing European and global negotiations.